I'm easy
by KyinHI
Summary: She's not easy.


"Anything's good, I'm easy. I'll see you in five."

Those were the last words she said to him.

"Easy, you are not," he had said with a laugh as he began pulling vegetables out of the refrigerator.

The smart retort had been received by dead air, the line cutting out when she called out to a cab and pressed end call.

He hadn't worried when ten minutes had passed. It was rainy, he'd seen the news reports; traffic was snarled from one end of the island to the other.

He hadn't worried after twenty. They were out of milk. Maybe she'd stopped to pick up a gallon.

He'd begun to pace after thirty, but his wife coming home late wasn't entirely an uncommon occurrence.

When the phone had rung after fifty-three - not that he'd been counting or anything – he'd known.

* * *

Easy she is not. Easy this isn't. But if there is one thing Castle is certain of, it's that those will not be her last words. And so he comes to her, every day, and he waits by her side, biding his time, filling his days with activities that doctors and nurses insist could be done by someone professional. After a few weeks, they tell him to go home, to attend to his life and that they'll call the minute there's any change. He sends them packing with a growl and a threat to cut funding on the memorial library that he's been sponsoring for the last ten years. They don't bother him after that, adeptly avoiding him as they go about their duties.

He talks to her in a soothing voice, telling her of his day, running fingers, aching from clenching, through her dull, lacklustre curls. He yearns to hear her respond, to hear the silken tones of her bedroom voice, or the sharp bite of her tongue when she means business. Just once. A moan, a cry… anything. Some small sliver of hope.

But apart from the steady beep of the heart monitor and the quiet puffs from between her lips, the room stays stubbornly silent. She's not easy.

He works her arms and legs, with a now long-practiced ease, to replenish lost tissue. Her muscles are all but gone now; it hasn't been long but he's no match for the atrophy of disuse. He rubs lotion onto her skin after, kneading deep and imagining that he's massaging away what ails her. It's a bottle he'd picked up on a whim, expensive but with a light scent, something she'd never afford herself the luxury of; the makings of a romantic evening in that had turned into a weekend-long stint in bed. He smiles when he remembers how annoyed with she'd been, how insistent that her regular brand was just fine. He's prays that the familiar scent of jasmine might rouse her, making soothing circles that once would have left her begging for more… deeper…

'_Oh, Castle, right there…' _

An hour long, sensual massage by candlelight had quickly changed her tune regarding Bvlgari Jasmine Noir. She hadn't complained when he'd come home bearing the matching scent. Sometimes she's a little bit easy.

On the day that the doctors recommend sending her to a convalescent home he gets mad. He yells at the orderly who changes her bed sheets while skilfully rolling her frail body to and fro, as though the low-salaried worker has any say in the matter at all. He yells at Alexis when she suggests they might be right. Finally, when he's done yelling at the doctors and the nurses, the janitor, and a shocked chaplain who just happens to be passing by her room, he yells at her.

"You're not easy, Kate. You're not! Five minutes, you said. It's been five weeks." He paces the floor, running frustrated hands through his hair, cringing with disgust when his fingers come back greasy. He doesn't remember the last time he took a shower, can't recall having a good night's sleep since sometime before this all started. "Wake up," he yells at her. "Come back to me. Come home. You were supposed to come home."

He slumps over, exhausted onto the hospital bed, and his momentum is enough to shift her body to the side. There's more than enough room for him to climb in and as he rearranges the covers over her, it makes him mad. She's the bed hog. _She's_ supposed to be the one nudging him to the edge of the mattress while making herself comfortable.

He _likes _that she's not easy. It's what had first attracted him to her all those years ago.

The wind falls out of his sails, his voice cracks and he chokes down a sob as he lies down beside her. It's useless. Nothing he has tried has worked. Nothing can penetrate the wall her damaged brain tissue has created.

He'd thought the self-imposed barriers of old were a task, her stubborn refusal to start anything with him even though they'd both known for years that they had something real. But those barriers have got nothing on the fortification provided by a simple slip off a curb during an unexpected summer rainstorm. The rampart that was erected when skull met cement would put the ancient Chinese to shame.

_The Great Wall of Beckett._

He snorts, a maniacal chuckle escaping his lips as he nudges his nose into her collarbone, inhaling deeply, trying to pick up any hint of the intoxicating scent that he only knows of as his wife. He smells bleach; antiseptic and lemon. Bvlgari Jasmine Noir. He curses the product, and vows that if – no, _when – _she wakes up, he will destroy every last bottle of it.

He's becoming desperate and he has to mentally force himself to unfurl his fingers as they twist and clasp at the crisp, white bed sheets. Doctor and nurses, specialists and well-meaning but misguided friends; they can be wrong, they can be wrong all the time. But not Kate Beckett. Not her. She's _never_ wrong. He's her husband, and she's told him, often; he should know. He _does_ know. God, she's not easy at all.

He counts to five. Taking deep breaths, he rolls onto his side and pulls her into his arms, spooning her into his embrace. Using his free hand, Rick smooths some hair that's fallen from her brow and tucks it behind her ear.

"Come back to me, come back to me," he chants as he tightens his grip around her waist. "Come back to me," he whispers as he buries his head into her shoulder, nosing into the crevice of her neck, and gentling his lips over the delicate shell of her ear.

His hand rests over her heart, her soft breasts moulded to his palms. He curls himself around her tightly and he feels himself drifting off the sleep, lulled by the steady thump that assures him Kate's still hanging on, the familiar pose that could almost have him believing that they are at home, in bed.

"Come home," He murmurs as his lashes drift shut.

"Five…" His eyes snap back open.

"…minutes."

It's a trick of his mind. It has to be. Maybe he's dreaming. And yet…

"Home soon…"

Just this once, he prays, rolling her in his arms so that she's facing him. Behind closed eyes there is rapid movement, the hand he's clasped onto with an almost iron grip twitches beneath his fingers. He runs his thumb over her pulse point and he could swear there's a slight uptick in the beat.

Just this once, he prays, let her be easy.

* * *

**So... that happened. It's not Perc (sorry readers of that, I'm just not in the mood to write 1st person), but it's something. My thanks to the Facebook gals for the prompt and to Kellie (Freewheeler, go read her stuff!) for the kickass beta that turned a wee drabble into a cohesive one shot.**


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